The most successful businesses are those with confidence in their ability to store, access and use data effectively. Rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts of storage, this view point looks at the data it holds and more importantly, what can be done with it.

This review looks at why small businesses need to stop being complacent about their networks and at what they can do to maintain their competitive edge as they follow the big boys down the route of increasing collaboration and other bandwidth-hungry applications likely to impact on network performance and availability.

Facebook woos celebrities with verified account option

Authenticated service looks to boost subscription feature

Facebook has unveiled an authenticated account system which will seek to verify profiles of celebrities and popular figures.

A company spokesperson told V3 that the feature, which has begun its testing phase, will target accounts which currently have a large number of subscribers. Account owners can authenticate their identities by submitting a government-issued ID.

In addition to verifying the authenticity of the account, the feature will also add a number of new profile and name display options for celebrity accounts.

"Once verified, they'll also have the option to more prominently display an alternate name - nickname, maiden name, byline, etc. - on their timelines in addition to their real name," the spokesperson said.

"This update makes it even easier for subscribers to find and keep up with journalists, celebrities and other public figures they want to connect to."

The issue of account verification on social networking services came to a head earlier this year when a Twitter account claiming to belong to Wendi Deng was marked by the company as authenticated.

Though the owner of the account quickly admitted that the profile was a satirical work, fallout from the incident lead experts to question the reliability of authenticated accounts.

Celebrity accounts have long been a popular target for social networking scams and attacks. Hackers have sought to take control of the accounts to spread spam messages and embarrass social networking firms.